In the 2012 Eastern District of Louisiana case In re Oil Spill by the Oil Rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico , U.S. District Court Judge Carl Barbier, in the face of the then-upcoming trial (since settled) involving liability for the well-known explosion that killed 11 people and led to the spilling of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, denied a motion by the plaintiffs’ steering committee (PSC) to have admitted, under the “business records” exception to the ban on hearsay under Federal Rule of Evidence 803(6), e-mail communications produced by defendants in discovery.
A review of the court’s approach to the issue should help guide practitioners who face both the legal and practical challenges of getting e-discovery admitted as evidence. Perhaps most importantly, the court’s approach reiterates two themes I have repeated in looking at many cases in this column over the past few years — namely, that cooperation is key, and that smart answers win.
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